


Meandering

by PsuedoQuiddity



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Meandering like the title, Sad, more characters later - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-10-25 10:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17723234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsuedoQuiddity/pseuds/PsuedoQuiddity
Summary: Small, intricate details of intricate lives in no particular order or fashion; the results of one man.





	1. The Sun Streams into the Garage

“I don’t think I can ever thank you enough,” Henry says, putting down a glinting wrench to favor a phillips screwdriver. “Hey, sometimes I feel like I don’t have the creativity I need for this kind of--” his real, human eyes gaze upon the wired mess of an actuator that might be a hand in the future. “These projects.” A free hand, streaked in grease, runs down his stubble. “I can create an animatronic, sure. I could even be--” he laughs. “You know, the whimsical professor type. Deck my house out like a crazy, mechanical fiend. I could have robots making my breakfast, but only because I’ve seen it in a movie once.”

William watches him; stops what he’s doing. Henry continues. “Don’t leave me floundering. You understand, right? I could put this on stage,” he smiles, gesturing to the mangled device on his desk. “I think it’s interesting. I could watch this tapping out-- Stevie Wonder, or something, but I’m the only one, the only one who,” a pause, “who finds this entertaining. I couldn’t make a living out of it. Industrial hermit that I am.” 

“So you’re using me?” 

Another chuckle, and this one comes from his stomach like a puff of steam. “Yeah, yeah, that’s it. Get out while you still can, huh.” 

“Too late,” says William, utterly engrossed, with his ankles crossed and the fabric of his clothing caught around the tiny panels of a verdant board. His fingers glance over the glossy surface and brush the harsh, sharp edges. “What was this about thanking me?” 

“If I started every conversation with a compliment, I could always count on you to keep me on track.” 

“Go on.” He presses a small, black button one fourth the size of his thumbpad, and a red light beams; blinks. 

Henry grins. “We make a good team. That should be the audio repeater,” he nods. 

“It is.” 

“For the--?”

“Rabbit.”


	2. Television Programmes

There was a television set in the living room, and he has the faintest clue that his family was affluent enough to afford the high end technology of the blurry-screened eighties. The floor was carpeted, the sort of cream carpet you could run your fingers through, and he remembers that specifically. Cartoons projecting sickly colored light against his face and the sound of shoes and the smell of grease.  
There was a peach-toned room in the house, and when he slides magazines from the racks of grimy corner stores, there’s a peach-toned room in every house, so he isn’t too sure. Perhaps it was rose, instead. Or a sunset pink. 

His childhood was generally mediocre, in the terms that it did him any good or provided him with any happy thoughts. He left early, because that was the best option at the time, and he’s been okay ever since. Despite the fact that he no longer has the money to buy nice TVs or a decently regrettable shag carpet, which may be for the best. Apartment to apartment is free living, and he has nothing permanent he’d like to hang up on his walls, anyway.  
He must have had the perfect nuclear family. The whole deal. A whole set of parents and a sibling, but perfect is relative when they’ve done nothing for you.

When he worked in a check-out lane, all monotony and the sound of clinking cash, he talked to a coworker whose childhood was as nothing and as absent and as unremarkable as his. The construction outline, the supporting beams that were her guardians and the materials that got her to where she is. Which is why he doesn’t care if he can’t see the hazy pictures of his bedroom, or know if he was fascinated in rocket ships or the Jurassic period.   
He doesn’t know what happened to her, to most of the people he’s met. He moved apartments, a form of freedom and a reflection of choice that comes with being an adult. 

Are you disquiet? Is the background not enough? Then move away and live someplace else. It’s the short of it, and he’s grateful for his liberties.   
He has a phone, acquaintances, and what’s important is that he’s not lonely, because he’s not stupid enough to forgo the basic requirements for humans that make humans human.   
He has a goal, too, since those things are wired into minds like command signals, like a god up there is sending out measurements to be sensed, and his readings are flashing get rich quick. Not that he has a specific plan, a detailed blueprint, of what to do with a thousand dollars, but he thinks he’ll get on a plane and vacation in the Bahamas, or Hawaii, like the cubicle workers in soap operas aspire to do.

The problem is he’s: not a cubicle worker, doesn’t have a solidified income, and is unsatisfied with all the jobs he’s worked at.   
In highschool, he might have been fond of mechanics, and that’s where he’s going next. The oil reminds him of home, maybe. 

Maybe. 

Or he could have taken a workshop class. 

 

 

There are always mirrors in apartments, no matter how shabby, which is fine and means nothing. Bringing up the topic makes it sound as though he has a problem with his physical appearance, but he doesn’t and can’t recall ever having one.   
In front of a cracked mirror, a clear one, a misty one, he bares his teeth and pinches his shoulders and lifts his jaw. He hasn’t changed in years. He’s permanently dirty, in a proper grits-of-humanity fashion, like he isn’t able to wipe the suit of flesh away from his bones and create a sleek, smooth face that can’t exist.   
He reminds himself of what an adult, vintage movie bully would look like; kind of too-large, possessing a natural bulk that can’t be used attractively anymore on the big screen, someone who used to teach scrawny kids how dirt tastes while wearing a ripped jersey. He fits that image, now deflated, gaunt around the face when he shouldn’t be, no matter how much he eats or takes care of himself. What follows is the mechanical, the reflexive question of genetics, and he absently knows that he got it from his father. 

Which is fine. 

He thinks his eyes are his best quality. 

 

 

They’re a phantom limb. That’s what it’s called, he thinks, but it’s been a couple of years. 

He hasn’t once been forced out onto the streets. What he isn’t is desperate, or destitute, he’s just lost in a poetic way that makes him look jobless when his shabby shoes scuff against the cream of pavement, disturbing grains of dust. If he were to sit down at someone else’s desk with someone else’s boss and really work, how he feels about it be damned, he could get rich quick. But the unfortunate thing about being poetically lost is that the journey has to be worth the bucks, and it’ll be his wits end to work at a restaurant until he’s the manager of a company he doesn’t care care for. 

The point is that he’s not one of them, but some guy thought he was. Someone in a wheelchair at the base of an apartment, and nothing mentioned really matters, and the set up of the story doesn’t matter, but what does is that they got to talking, because it’s followed him as an old, sepia memory ever since. A photograph he takes out and holds and pretends it means anything at all. That sounds sad, desperate and destitute, but he doesn’t mean it to be that way. It’s a detail of his life, and when he’ll get what he can take, he’ll take it and expound until it drives him crazy to mentally describe it one more time. 

It’s not as though he’s ever wanted to be a therapist, like hell, but there’s an interest in human psychology. It’s why the conversation sticks and stays.   
Sensors - neural structures - find measurements - nerves - of a limb that’s missing, and send signals to the brain. The readings think it’s still there; the arm, the leg, the tooth, the bone, the sinews. 

The last step on an unfamiliar staircase that you think is hovering in the dark, they’re the absent notion of knowing that an item will be there when you pick it up and it isn’t, which is more accurate, because there’s an absence of something that has never existed. 

They feel genuine, real, like a family, at the back of his mind when he’s not paying attention to himself and is staring at an outdated television set. It takes a grip of consciousness to hold the smoke of the phantom rooted there to know that he’s never had seven siblings. _Seven_ or _six_ or _five_ , and it’s ridiculous. 

He always takes the time to figure what it’d be like to live together, those ghostly kids, all of them sitting on the shag carpeting next to him with their tiny, swollen eyes and still bodies, watching his cartoons that he doesn’t remember. 

Shoved into a small space and enough to make him

_claustrophobic_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just my personal thoughts on what Michael might be thinking; grown up and forgetful and repressing memories.


	3. Another Visit

“It’s still raining,” William says. He’s been listening to the steady, pressing creaks of the carpeted staircase a room over. “I’ve only been here for an hour or so.” The proof is soaked into his clothing, not yet dry; his hands, which he had tucked inside his coat upon exiting the car, are clean. They’re holding a white mug, half-full and still warming his bones. It’s cold outside. 

His back aches from hunching over the tawny, glossed table with his elbows digging into his knees, listening to the pattering, the drumming droplets, against the window nearby. It rained last week, too, on and off for days, but weather has never bothered him much. 

There’s shuffling from the kitchen, though not as persistent or methodical as the rumbling of the hovering, somber storm. “They insisted,” William drones, automatically, to fill the space, “on a gift. I told them you wouldn’t be hungry, but I--” He sets the cup down and the black, murky tea inside ripples. “I couldn’t tell them no. Obviously.” A nod, even if he wouldn’t see. “You can likely tell who made what. She can hardly reach the cabinets, afterall.” 

The sweet, kind little girl that she is. 

With a soft, thin smile, he continues. The pad of his index finger swipes slowly around the mug, to blur the ring of moisture that’s there. “There are ingredients all over the counter, naturally, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the brown sugar bag was empty before I left. In a hurry, that is. I figured I would outpace the clouds, like some sort of madman. I should have watched the news.” 

Insidious, he imagines his words as curling steam, as lingering as the rain; he tirelessly plays with his own thoughts, still gazing downwards. 

William sighs. “I don’t mind. The mess, I mean. She spilled flour, the jar having slipped, but I don’t mind. The room is covered with her handprints.” 

It drags from Henry’s heart, the wail that escapes beside him, audibly torn from his throat like it’s been clawing to do so for a while. A drowning, intake of breath follows, and when William finally lets his eyes drift higher, he doesn’t get to see those darkened, restless bruises beneath their lids. Henry has his pale face in his hands, sloppily covering his jaw, his cheeks, his sight, lips dragging at the calloused palms. 

Even the quivering of his shoulders eventually comes to a lethargic halt, the slumped body worn down with perceivable exhaustion, but it takes time. William listens to it all; the rain and the tears, because neither of them have ever bothered him much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which only one of them has a daughter.


	4. Locked Bird

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Character death/s

You place your small hands over the cloth of your shirt, the delicate layer of skin beneath, the imprint of your ribs and the soft fluttering that sweeps at its cage like a battered bird. You feel it so intimately, for the first time, the creature held within your chest that’s dearly desperate, and you lose yourself there in the white noise of your breathing and its struggle to leave. 

You drew a bird today in school. As your classmates reached for their bags in the closets, you stood outside to tell them how good it was, and they agreed. There was something right about the drawing this time; the neck stretched, the ruffle-feather details and liquid eyes staring above itself. Your teacher asked what kind it was. You don’t know, but the hope-chest in the hallway has a messy book of them that you used to stare at, before you could read, and you could figure out there. 

It must be a red bird, a red bird, a loud bird. You begin to cry. Birds have hollow bones and yours feel brittle. 

The loose leaf paper was smoothed, as ivory and clean, warm sheets, all the way from school to the bus to the sidewalk, because you had handled it with such care. The framed pictures in the hallways don’t have any wrinkles and this one won’t, either, when it’s displayed. You held it with gentle hands, fingers pressed flat in elated adoration that used to soar. 

Counting cars as you clambered home, scuffing pavement with pretty shoes, watching the parked ones; silver neighbours, a purple passerby and a streak of blue. The door to your house opened before you crossed the road and the blue kept on going like the sky does. 

You gaze down because your mother shouts, and the tears that crawl down your cheeks are there because you’re confused. 

You have frail bones and a beating heart and a drawing you are very, very proud of, and hands hold you, hold you flush to shoulders, and you’re worried about the folds in your perfect paper. 

She lifts you and for a moment it is close to flying. 

 

 

 

When your hand trails down off of your bed, it does not brush passing fur, nor does it curl around a golden tail, so tonight is wrong. 

You’re in a nightdress that swaths your legs in snug fabric as you think about your kitchen. You do homework on the table there, usually, but not today. It’s unfinished and slipped into your bag, which is downstairs and far, far away, in the recesses of the blackness that the night casts about the ground. 

The flashlight hidden under the covers is cold on your ankle, but it’s not on when you hear your mother cross the carpet, the creak it makes, and the shadow that’s cast by your door. Which is important. 

She enters your room with a smile, ready for bed, too, and you smile back. Her long, blonde hair is tucked into her shirt, and if you were tall enough you’d fix it the same way that she adjusts your clothing in the morning; with affection and all the control of an adult. She opens the closet, flicks on the light, and pretends to clean the boxes of stuffed animals that you picked up yesterday. You watch it happen, her touch that graces the put-away items. 

“Look at all these toys,” she says, and you nod, eyes wide. “Look at everything you have. You have so much.” She unlocks a container, a sticker-decked chest that you decorated yourself, years ago, and holds up your fox. “Do you love them?” 

You say yes and she tells you that they all love you, too, since you take such good care of them, and she tells you that you’re responsible and sweet and kind, and that there’s no difference between death and heaven. 

As your mother slowly settles the blankets below your chin, exactly there, she gives you the bear to keep, to hold tight, and together you murmur a twilight prayer to fall asleep to. Before the goodnight, she promises to hang your bird up, where your father will see it. 

You can feel the curls trace the outline of your face, frame it, peaceful when the room becomes dark so that you lay there and imagine how drifting into a slumber might be. You become uniquely aware of your body, how restful and heavy the limbs can become. 

But there’s a job to be done, and so you, as the guard that you’ve determined yourself to be, collect the metal flashlight and touch your feet placidly to the cushioned floor. Soft, soft.  
Your insides, once settled while laying in the enveloping drowsiness of a bed, are suspended in the clear breaths you take into your lungs. Hovering heart, hovering ribs and belly as you do what you are not supposed to, greeting the window with deep, drinking eyes that swallow the silken stars and velvet moon.

You open your window and remember that the locks you fumble with are also called sashes, you guess, because of The Night Before Christmas that your teachers always read to you in December. The air is a breezy Spring, though, and it bathes your pale face in comforting coolness. The beam of your light is another moon, circular and illuminating. 

Knees dug into peach carpet, somber, leaning on the windowsill, you’ve always known that there’s a difference between death and heaven and missing. 

You’re there for the entirety of the dusk, goosebumps to your elbows, but he doesn’t come back. 

 

 

 

If you could reach out and touch the music of the radio, it would be like slipping your hands into winter mittens, with the fuzzy noise encircling your fingers on all sides. If the radio was an emotion, it would be the blurry lucidity of morning and the sensation of sleep at your lids. Hazy and thoughtless. The gentle tunes would be your rising breaths, playing on sensitive, supple skin that you want to bury your face into, to avoid the early birds. 

Both twitter idly today at breakfast. You are tired. The back porch, which you can see from the table, is empty. 

You woke up in bed with a dream swirling in your mind; a picture of the stars, dappled, darkened skies, and life in your lungs. There is more life in you than there was yesterday, or on any day before, so the night air must still be swelling in your chest. There’s energy in you that wasn’t there before, which means that something will happen, and that you are prepared to find it out yourself. 

When you push the white plate aside and stand, you patter by the panes and press your palms to the warm sun that is suspended just above your head, so it becomes the second time that your mother finds you peering out the window. But she doesn’t speak; not right away. 

She tells you that she has a surprise, for tomorrow, and that she’s glad to see you. She rubs your shoulders and combs painted nails through your curls. You lean towards her and stare at the wild flowers hidden in tussles of grass and explain that you weren’t hungry. She says that it’s fine, and you ask who will you give the breadcrumbs to? And she does not answer, so you consider throwing it out to the birds, but your mother leaves your side to take care of it herself as soon as you grasp upon the concept. 

Grasp. You tug at your looping, golden hair like your mother did, and watch your feeble reflection, pale and weak; your blue eyes blend in with the sky. And the color keeps going and keeps going and keeps going until it all becomes a watery blear. 

You’re going to go outside today. It’s a pleasant morning. The birds are singing, and it’s spring, and there is light. 

 

 

 

Silky, pink petals; you touch them, drag sloppy fingers down their stems and smell the nature that they were pulled from. You ruin their pretty, fragile grace in your selfish fists until you have claimed a bedraggled bouquet of wilt. 

Your hands are filthy and wet with dirt and dew, along with the hem of your skirt and your knees. Your senses are all a little too loud, and you are uncomfortably aware. 

_The birds the birds the birds;_ they warble, with chests expanding, high above you. When you breathe, it carries your heart in the swell like a tugged weight, then sinks back to nestle beneath its cage. 

Your mind is wild with a rattled, thoughtless pace, and the flowers suffer for it further. Their beauty crumples, yet you bend to pick out one more, one more, and so on, until the pastels that once splotched the backyard are scattered. Until you grasp upon a rock and become still. 

Because this is what is done, you know this, while coupled with a sense of secrecy that you refuse to repeat. The flowers, preserved and tender, press against the base of a grey stone, but it isn’t right. Why are you collecting flowers, you think, if there’s no stone? And yet there is, resting on your muddied palm, and you hate it. You think of uniform slabs wearing gifted flowers, think of solemnity, and since there are neither here, you reject it, too. 

The air bursts with birds and tumbling carnations. The stone, which you wound behind your back enough to hurt, had struck a nest. There are petals in your curly, tangled tresses and the remnants of a shout choking your throat. You feel a sort of surge; a heated power. You stand strained, feet planted, mashing grass into earth. You bare your teeth and _breathe_. 

Spring silence settles and the back door doesn’t open to reveal your mother, like you imagined it might. 

When the twittering begins again and a purple car passes by in the street, you believe that no one even heard you at all. 

 

 

 

The surprise is so good that you were prepared to leave no more than an hour after your mother gently shook you awake. Today will be extra special, you think, extra good, extra everything with cherries on top. You ask her, with a slanted, funny smile, if cherries would be good with cheese, and she laughs with you, because under no circumstances would they ever be. You ask more questions you know are silly as she shuffles, still tired, into the kitchen. By the time you’ve finished eating, the two of you have bickered over cereal, syrup, honey, and have decided that chocolate might be okay. You’ll figure it out when you get there, you say, and she tells you that it will still be a few hours yet. 

Never has the time ever tip-toed by for this long. The dress you picked out, one of a few that you laid on your bed to choose in order to spend a few extra minutes, is your new favorite, your today-favorite. 

You open your closet to look for a plastic cup, a bag, a spare pouch, and scrounge around for thin, red tickets. You lay them out on your bed, unfolded and presented in an arc of a line, and count twenty-seven with practice. Games have always been your specialty. Which is proven as you, considerate with your trophies, settle the bear and his band of friends thoughtfully down on your pillows. But you’re missing one, and you want to have them all here. Perhaps you’ll race to the glass counter, soon, waving strings of red in eager, grabbing hands. You know exactly where he is, hanging above because he’s a special prize, like all the others, and if you’re a ticket short by the end of the day, maybe the person who works there won’t care because you are positively beaming. When you come back home, you’ll have them all, and then they can perform together. 

The old grandfather clock downstairs chimes at twelve, and you’re hovering by the door at its last toll. Just a few more minutes, your mother says, as she passes you to sweep up the stairs, not even ready. It’s a little annoying, and your impatience seeps beneath your skin. You adjust the bag at your shoulder and sit down, the dress stretching across your pale and skinny knees. Your body suddenly seems like a lot to take care of. All limbs and bones and cumbersome moving. With a huff that blows your curls, you fumble with the laces of your pretty shoes. Chin down, breathing on your chest; muffled. You are focused. 

You glance up, at the yellow wallpaper, at the hallway beyond the foyer. The sun paints the rooms. You can see the back door from here, and you can see your red bird, too. So you stand to idle closer, to greet it. Reaching out into a beam of sunspots, your hand is illuminated as you strain to touch it. The bird is perched above your head. You cannot touch it; there’s a crease there, in a corner, and you cannot right it. The paper hangs nicely, right next to a framed painting that’s been in your house as long as you have. 

There’s a collection of pink flowers in a clear, shining glass on a marble, kitchen surface. 

The sound of your mother calling you to the door comes later, as you’re winding the largest flower around the zipper and straps of your token and ticket bag. It tangles there, still fresh since yesterday. You grin and run toward the blue, stretching sky. 

 

 

 

Pizza and chocolate sauce do mix afterall, the woman at the sparkling counter tells you. She explains that she’s had it before, and you look intently at your mother who is playing with her own bag. You touch the delicate flower wound around yours. 

There’s a constant warble of music, and it’s as familiar as it is exciting. The anticipation keeps you on your toes, and so you stand on them, tip-top straining above your height, fingers splayed in the air, to watch the children. There’s the swooping cry of an arcade tucked behind a corner. 

You let your mother guide you with her hand on your back, rubbing at your shoulder and brushing your hair, further into the building and much, much closer. The floor splits here, from a scuffed and glossy white to a vividly patterned, pop-art carpet that you’ve flown across so many times before. Don’t trip and fall, you’ve been told. Be careful. 

She bends down, when you’re not by the chairs yet, and you can tell that she knows how eager you are to re-explore again. She holds out a plastic cup of clattering coins, and you take it eagerly, and she gives you one last hold, one last kiss to the top of your head before she smiles and leaves for a table, slowly, so that you know where she is if you ever need her. 

You shake the cup. It is not your birthday, but there are more quarters than usual. 

A song dies out; you watch a paw strum a guitar, and the room exhales into the swell of noise when you do. Like the radio, it all filters into the background and becomes a fuzzy tune that wraps around your mind. But this time, you stand still, staring at your glinting coins and you stop thinking, somehow, absorbed in nothing. The life here envelopes you, but not comfortably. You can hear your own breathing the loudest. 

A boy and the band clamor into you at the same moment, and you watch him go with a tugging frown as he races past, and you want him to apologize, but he’s already with friends. Gawking up, up; swaying his shoulders and laughing at the stage that is the room’s everything. So you swallow, hard, then smile. You tap your shoes on the smooth floor, and then on the carpet, hopping over onto the patterns as though you’re switching worlds. The singing, dancing one, to the flashing, pixelated one. That doesn’t mean you can’t sing, no; you usually do when it’s someone’s birthday, when you hear it from your game corner cubbyhole. You hope it’s someone’s birthday today. 

You turn hurriedly to the chirps rising from the crowd of blinking video games and fly as fast as you can manage, your bag bouncing against your hip and your quarters clutched close to your chest. You eye the prize counter as you pass, just to see your purple rabbit hanging above. They come in a group, and it’s difficult to set up a band who’s missing a friend. Your father will let you use the cardboard in the garage as a stage, and the window shades can be the curtains. You have an entire plan laid out. 

With a big puff of air, you slide onto the first round, black seat that’s open, next to someone you don’t know who’s younger than you. 

You’re already absorbed in the screen. This one is like a cartoon, with a moving character and all, but you can never seem to wrangle the story out of _The Dragon’s Dungeon_. Your silver coins clatter into place and your back arcs as you ready yourself, a hand on the controls. Arrows flash, over and over, and you can sense that there’s a pattern, but you can never remember it, and you’re never quick enough, and-- You lose. The knight melts into bones before he crumbles away. Older kids usually play this one, so you must not be old enough. That’s fine, you’re better at other things. 

You slide off of the seat, minding your dress, and travel further inside the cave of chattering buttons. 

There’s a young adult, in purple with a flashing badge that you wish was at the prize counter, bent over _Tsunami_. You wander nearer to place your fingers on the side of the cabinet, perching there because this is a game that you’re good at. 

“Is it broken?” Several other kids, you can tell, peer over your shoulder to look closely at the game.  
“Uh,” he tells you that it is, and there’s a minor wave of disappointment, but you just beam, swipe at a button and tell him to fix it soon. He nods and you tell him why; that you need a toy that’s one hundred and twenty tickets. You bend your knees several times until he responds with a confirmation that he’ll be done soon. You say that you’re wearing your favorite dress, and he says that it’s very pretty. You think so, too, which is why you picked it. 

A machine nearby distracts your attention and you hop closer, only a few screens away from the man. _Midnight Motorist_ beeps at you for quarters, so you comply and ready your stance once more. 

This time, you get ten tickets. The second time five, and when you try for a third attempt, none. You frown. That’s fine. There are more video games. 

Your heart is beating faster than normal when you reach the back of the room with a measly handful of red, trailing tickets. You stuff them into your bag and suck in a breath as you face the grey wall. There are less and less sounds of clacking keys and an increase in demanding, whirring machines. One light hangs overhead, but not on you. The back has always been a darker place. The songs are muted, here.

The nerves, the agitation, in your body resurfaces. The excitement is gradually twisting itself into something else that you don’t like. 

To your left is a line of electronics and, eventually, the prize counter. Nearby are the bathrooms. The right is a wall. A wall, posters, and games. That’s all that’s left. You feel silly, but you don’t know why. You feel off, but you don’t know why. There’s nothing else to do. There’s a pressure on your chest. 

You sit yourself down hesitantly at another, boxed in by the black sides, and recognize it. You’ve beat it before. A bunch, but you can’t find the motivation to count. 

The screen glares and lights up your eyes, flushing your face in a pale blue that hurts if you focus on it. You shuffle on your seat, tugging off the straps of your bag, the flower nearly catching in your hair, but it stays steadfastly stuck. You drape it over the black surface presented in front of you. 

The maze begins. 

It’s-- 

_TIME IS UP!_

It’s a token or no token game. You either win or you don’t. Again, then. Your brows are furrowed in concentration. 

_OUT OF BOUNDS_

You didn’t know that was possible. You were being chased, so this isn’t fair. The machine chirps a starting tune. 

_TIME IS UP!_

That’s not fair. 

_TIME IS UP!_

You can’t find-- 

_TIME IS UP!_

You can’t find him-- 

_TIME IS UP!TIME IS UP!TIME IS UP!TIME IS UP!_

You sob into the flashing, cheering, warbling machine. You sob, and it wracks your hollow body, your hollow bones, and it drags your chest inwards and drags you down, because time is up, time is up, time is up. You shake and shiver alone, in the lights that cast themselves around you and create deep, dark marks on your face and clothes. You don’t know where to put your arms; you’re uncomfortable and crowded in such a small space, such a small space, and the tears that drip down your lids come from exhaustion and this pulling, hurting sadness. 

When the game knows that you won’t play anymore, the screen goes black for a moment or two. But through bleary eyes, it’s dustier looking than the other ones when a smooth and inky, darker shadow is cast upon the reflection there. The shadow, taller than the screen, sways. 

“Susie,” 

There’s no air coming through your runny inhales, so you part your lips, sniffling. 

“I’ve found someone who misses you very, very much.” 

You bite your lip. 

“He’s not really dead.” 

You’re hit with a dizziness that swaths your head in a haze. You are tired and his voice is nice. You are tired and you miss your best friend. The chair squeaks as you tilt your chin, then angle yourself to face him. 

The rabbit. The one that you don’t see anymore, and not the one onstage. You wonder where he’s been. He used to do all sorts of tricks. He sang and danced. You rub your watery, glazed eyes, movements fluttering and fragile. 

“Where were you?”

“He is over here.” 

Tears stain your cheeks and drip down your chin. The ones that have dried feel damp and uncomfortable. You struggle out of your seat with the wobbling, unsteady legs of a baby bird. 

“Okay,” you reply, and you hold out a hand. He’s taller than you are, sturdier, and there’s familiar comfort in that. 

He walks to you, almost hops; there’s a jaunty stride to him, and his ears slant along. He doesn’t hold your hand. He softly slides a large paw above your shoulder blades, and you’d be restless if your mother was nearby. But she isn’t, and it’s only him. Your mom is wrong, anyway, and so is your dad. 

“Follow me.” 

The rabbit leads you to the bathrooms, you think, or to the corridor that’s connected to them, because there’s nothing else here. You blink at him with wet, dewy lashes, and he smiles back. You ask him where he is, and his hand trails up, up, to gently grace your neck and stroke your curls. They’re tucked into your shirt, so he winds fingers beneath to fix and smooth them down. 

You suddenly want to pull away and scrub at your skin. 

He winks, you can barely tell, but he does, and you both move to the end; to a dead end. “I know you can keep a secret,” he mutters, and you try to imagine him performing but can’t seem to draw up the memories. They’re disjointed, that rabbit and this one, and the fluttering, beating thing in your chest is unsettled. It’s harder to pretend with this one; that’s it. Hard to pretend that he's a rabbit. Lines are drawn in the wall when he tugs at it, and a door peels away from the checkers like a sticker from a sheet of paper. You have a trunk in your bedroom covered in colorful stickers. You want to decorate it more, when you get home. 

“In here? Is he-- in here?” You call out to him into the void that lies ahead. Your dog doesn’t make a sound. 

You’re anxious, now. 

“Closer, closer,” comes his lyrical voice in your ear, the words drawn out and hissed and soft. You don’t understand. 

But you don’t try to when your head collides with the frigid tile flooring; the pain is a blinding, white coldness that spikes through the haze that used to be there. You shriek _after_ the door is closed. 

It is so dark. 

You scramble on your palms and patter back for your dog. You vy to clench onto long, golden fur, to grip a waving tail. To touch a friendly face and be nudged in return. He’s been gone for days. 

You think about being gone for days and press your spine to a corner. 

There’s an awful clicking, latching, mechanical sound all around you and you scream, you scream again out of confusion and not because you know what’s happening, but you wish you did. Your fingernails scrabble at the surface behind you, then below you, and you bring your knee down on the cloth of your dress as you try to crawl through this headache and you hear it _rip_. 

The mask of the rabbit looms over you, but this time you see his purple shirt and reaching, calloused hands until your jaw is forced back and you can’t _breathe_ , with his _hands around your neck_ , and the screeching, pounding, flapping bird lodged in its cage in your chest is the only sound that blares, and blares, and chirps and screams. 

You move but it’s not breathing; you move again and it’s still not a breath. You’re looking upwards but there is no blue, expanding, stretching sky, and you never colored in your bird that’s hanging up near the foyer. But when the blackness glints silver you know that it must be the key, and when the key is driven down to unlock it you see that it is a _red bird, a red bird, a red bird; a loud bird, and you’re sorry that it doesn’t have a bright blue sky to greet, but for a moment you feel you are close to flying--_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to everyone who's read my little emotional blurbs thus far! I haven't written anything in second person before, but I felt that this one needed to be more personal. At least it's longer.


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